There is a myriad of opportunities to connect with your potential ideal clients and customers, but the WAY in which you do so can mean the difference between enchanting them into brand ambassadors or annoying them so much that they’re put off for life.

While it’s important to take a holistic view of your marketing methods, I believe many business owners simply don’t realize the full power of inbound marketing and end up sticking with only interrupting their audience instead.

What is interruption, or outbound, marketing?

Outbound marketing encompasses many traditional routes to customers, such as:

Ads:

Print, e.g. magazine ads

TV commercials

TV shopping channels

Online ads, e.g. Facebook and PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

Cold methods:

Cold calling/telemarketing

Cold pitching

Trade shows

Networking (in-person or online)

Round-robin letters/email blasts

Direct mail

Essentially, they all involve you interrupting your prospective clients’ day.

Why you should stop interrupting your ideal clients

Most of us have grown up being bombarded by outbound marketing throughout each day of our lives.

In fact, our global population currently consumes more than 8 hours of media per day (10+ hours in the US; ZenithOptimedia via Quartz) and, with the majority of publishers having ad revenue streams, marketing clutter increases year on year.

Whether they’re on the food you eat, billboards, clothing labels, or via your favorite beauty blogger, it can feel like we’re drowning in ads.

Marketing researchers have estimated a person living in a city in the 1970s was exposed to up to 500-2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000+ brand exposures (and 300+ ads noticed per day) at present.

As the clutter increases, we get savvier at avoiding ads.

We use caller ID, spam filtering, ad blockers (615 million devices, and growing, now use AdBlock – PageFair) and companies, like TiVo and Gmail, produce technologies to help us avoid outbound marketing.

We often choose to do our own research online, ask for recommendations, read reviews and use platforms like Pinterest to collect our interests and desired products. And as one area gets saturated, we move to another – see Kipp Bodnar’s frustration at “scorched earth marketing” on HubSpot’s blog.

It’s our responsibility, as purpose-led and ethical business owners, to reduce the outbound marketing clutter.

But I’m not saying you should never advertise or make cold inquiries.

Don’t get me wrong, you need to use the best avenues to reach customers which suit your business and personality. And it’s getting easier to qualify your target audience before you send any marketing their way.

But, even though the influential giants Google and Facebook enable companies of all shapes and sizes to advertise via custom-built audiences or media tailor-made to individual users, any type of outbound marketing can still feel intrusive.

Why?

It’s in the very nature of it because the people you’re promoting to have not given you their permission. They haven’t directly asked to see information about that product.

As a heart-centered business owner, I know you want to employ responsible marketing.

So, if you want to reduce how often you disturb your ideal clients, what other avenues are available to you?

5 ways to invite permission from your ideal clients

This method fits with my personality better than outbound marketing. As an introvert (specifically an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs scale), I hate to feel like I’m annoying people. I’ve found that my introvert clients tend to share this fear. (Anyone else? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!)

But the best part?

When you know how to use inbound marketing effectively, prospective customers want to hear (and buy) from you.

So, what is inbound marketing?

In my view, the core values of inbound marketing are:

Helpfulness

Empowerment

Community

Helpfulness

Offering relevant advice and knowledge without any expectation of sales.

Empowerment

Enabling your tribe (readers, fans, followers, subscribers, clients and prospective customers) to make the decisions which are right for them, not you.

Yes! I do totally agree with all of this. My mind set had been completely changed last year and I’ve been working towards fixing it ever since. Not only is my business booming but my personal relationships with people are flourishing! Thanks for sharing!